siri

With the release of iOS 7 to the general public, Bing now has a prominent home inside of Apple’s chief operating system. When you Siri, you will very often Bing. That might sound odd, but Apple is more concerned with Google at the moment than Microsoft — especially given Apple’s lack of an enterprise services business — so Bing it is for its search needs. Read More

Intel has made another international acquisition in its push into artificial intelligence technology: it has bought Indisys, a Spanish startup focused on natural language recognition. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but it is reportedly “north” of €20 million ($26 million). It comes just two months after news broke that Intel acquired Omek, an Israeli maker of… Read More

Editor’s note: Dan Kaplan is a freelance Content Strategist and armchair futurist. He has worked in marketing for Asana, Twilio and Salesforce.
In the wake of Apple’s big iOS 7 reveal, there has been much hoopla and quibbling. The bulk about it has centered around the design choices made by Jony Ive, his team and (apparently) some icon designers in marketing. Read More

A new front has opened in the smartphone war, and for the first time in many years, Apple is both outnumbered and outgunned.
I’m not talking about the phones themselves. iOS is still better than Android, although the gap has narrowed. The next iPhone will doubtless be the best phone in the world when it’s released, as ever. It won’t be as customizable – no Swype, no… Read More

Apple’s Siri voice assistant on iOS devices retains information to help the company generate better and more accurate results in the analysis process that takes place at its remote servers. The company has never previously revealed exactly how long it keeps that data or how exactly it works, but now Wired has learned from an Apple spokesperson exactly how Siri IDs and store data, as well… Read More

Apple is in court again in China, defending another of its products from attack based on pre-existing claims from a Chinese company. This time around it’s Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, that has landed it in Chinese legal trouble, after last year another company took issue with the iPad trademark resulting in a $60 million settlement deal. Read More

With all the time, money, and embarrassment Apple has offered up on the altar of Siri, it’s only a logical next step to see the virtual personal assistant migrate over to Mac OS X.
The question is not if, but when? Read More

A few days ago, I read Nilay Patel’s review of the Pebble smartwatch for The Verge. Like many others, I bought a Pebble on Kickstarter, and I can’t wait to try it out myself. But one part of Patel’s review stuck out at me in particular:
Any incoming notification will quietly buzz the Pebble and light up the screen. Frankly, it’s great — being able to see… Read More

Amazon today announced that it is acquiring Ivona Software, a Polish-based specialist in voice technologies that competes with Nuance and is already used in the Kindle Fire for services covering text-to-speech, voice commands and “Explore by Touch.” The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read More

A new job description spotted by 9to5Mac’s Jordan Kahn this morning suggests Apple wants to do something with Siri that makes the digital personal assistant a more fleshed out, relatable character. The posting is seeking someone with creative skills to help “evolve” Siri. Do you have what it takes to make Siri into the terrifying AI with an uncanny human semblance we all know… Read More

Apple has introduced a new feature for existing Apple TV second and third generation hardware in its latest beta software for those devices. Specifically, the beta for Apple TV being tested by developers right now adds Bluetooth support to Apple’s set top streamer, making it possible to pair keyboards to the device for much easier text entry and streamlined navigation. But it could open… Read More

An Apple patent filing published by the USPTO on Thursday describes a task manager that goes well beyond the standard Reminders app that is now built in to iOS and Mac devices. The patent describes a smart to-do list that combines natural language processing for easy text entry, with contextual information sourced from your device to fill in all the little details that you might omit in making… Read More

Norman Winarsky, vice president of SRI Ventures, offered his thoughts today on how Apple has handled the acquisition and subsequent relaunch of Siri as an integrated service in iOS. He was diplomatic about some of the criticism Siri has received, while also acknowledging the service has some real shortcomings.
For those of you not familiar with Siri’s history, the startup actually spun… Read More

A new report from 9t05Mac this morning claims that Apple will be delivering a couple of very interesting features to the desktop, in a move that continues its trend of making its traditional computers more closely resemble its iOS-based devices withe every release of OS X. “Reliable sources” told the blog that early builds of OS X 10.9 include Siri voice commands, and hints that… Read More

Maluuba, the TC Disrupt finalist and Android-based Siri competitor today has unveiled a major new platform play, via its natural language processing (NLP) API for app developers. The Maluuba team believes that NLP is the next logical interface for use across any category of app, just like keyboards, buttons and touch points have been before it, and this API is designed to help them take an… Read More

Siri got nice little boost a few weeks ago when she (or he, depending on your locale) was updated to handle sports information, restaurant reservations and movie listings, but it seems the virtual assistant’s faculty with films will soon extend beyond just rattling off showtimes. According to a handful of images obtained by 9to5Mac, Siri will be able to help users buy movie tickets once… Read More

Maluuba, the Android-based Siri competitor and TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco finalist, just announced that it has partnered with OpenTable and the menu and restaurant hours database Locu. Maluuba is also launching a full version of its app in India, allowing users there to access local information about movies, businesses, restaurants and events. Read More

Apple’s looking into some intriguing things in a couple of new patent applications spotted oday, including sonar-style echolocation for passive proximity detection, and a text-to-speech engine that takes contextual cues about what it’s reading and adds personality to the computer-generated voices it employs. Both of these could result in big changes in the daily use of mobile devices. Read More

Maluuba, the Siri-like personal assistant that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt SF earlier this year, just announced the launch of its Maluuba International Edition. Until now, the service was only available in the U.S., Australia, UK and Ireland, but the International Edition is now available worldwide in the Google Play store. As part of this launch, Maluuba is also now featured in the… Read More

Document management provider OfficeDrop has a new capability for voice-activated search that represents just the start in how mobile apps are changing with the advent of natural-language, speech-recognition technology. The service is built on Nuance, the Boston-based company that has developed a speech-recognition service called Nina, which debuted in August. Read More